Tutorial – What to do with a pile of fancy magazines?

When I moved to my new place a year ago, the post office offered us free magazine subscriptions. Hooray! Free stuff!!! I was excited to open the first one and read it, I then just opened the second and left it on the coffee table shelf then the third one ended up unwrapped until today!

In the mean time I started collecting Coke caps to redeem rewards on mycokerewards.com and I ended up getting more magazine subscriptions!!! You’d think I would have learned! Not to mention that I also buy some at the kiosk once in a while.

My coffee table shelf was so crowded I couldn’t add anymore magazines so I went through them and picked up the pages that inspired me to make envelopes and cards.
Some will go to my Etsy shop, some will be kept to share with friends and family.

So go through you your pile of magazines and let’s start! You can also go through your posters, illustration books, children books, even your junk mail!

Note:
-I use 3 different size templates that I lay on the illustrations I preselected and use the one that covers the picture the best.

The Envelopes

For this tutorial I’ve selected a painting from the magazine Antique, one of my favorite source for making those fancy envelopes of mine.

1.Lay your template on the picture and outline with a pencil.

I personally prefer to cut paper with an X-Acto knife as it makes the edges perfectly straight but if you don’t have one, scissors work fine.

It should look like this

3.Fold the flaps.

It should look like this.

4. Line the inside. (Optional) You can line the whole envelope or just the flap, it’s up to you. Just note that lining the envelope makes a thicker material that would not rip easily. It can be a good idea if you consider mailing it.

First, make a template in the desired size. I copied the envelope template and cut it.

Depending on your selection you can make one that opens like a check book or one that opens like a regular book or a single sheet one. Here are a few examples.
For this tutorial, I chose 3 pictures that I thought were matching the style of the envelope and decided to make a “tryptich” card. It is up to you and what you have to work with. I find it easier to make the card with preselected images rather than make the card and illustrate it afterward.

1. Make the card 1/8? smaller than your envelope all the way around. It is very important to do so or your card will not fit the envelope!!!

Wow I am spellbound!
Thanks for sharing! I also love cutting and pasting and am addicted to my scrapbook…But your work really opened my eyes about what I can do MORE with those fashion magazines! Thank you!

Wow. I was wondering about what to do with my project with cardstock and a LOT of magazines then I saw this. Never realized how creative you can be with magazines! Really helped my brain out, thanks for the nice tutorial!